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There are always women who like to say they are not feminists -- famous, successful, courageous and powerful woman at that(!) -- but, then, those women who say that have made their voices heard across the globe, over time, loudly and clearly, and that probably couldn’t have happened without a great deal of help from feminism, and I guess technology.

When I was a young girl, I never heard about feminism, even though it was at its height and heyday, when women burned their bras and parted their hair in the middle and called out for revolution. They read books about it with bubbly fonts on the cover. They started collectives where they would teach each other how to care for their bodies. They spent almost all their time learning to not be afraid.

After awhile, they were no longer afraid, but just burning up with anger, so much that they had to set their bras on fire. They had to show how much patriarchy had hurt them, and all women. This was courageous and exciting; I am sure if I were there I would have wept with joy and rage.

I wish I had been able to participate in this. I can only read about it now, wondering how much was lost to biased reports and people not getting it.

It would have been a struggle for me to burn my bra, though. I love lingerie, and bras are my favorite. The lacy architecture is a tribute to the beauty of women’s bodies. Bras, for me, have never been about anyone else but me, and maybe that is the patriarchy working within me, but I have always liked bras and I kind of don’t care why. Not a girdle though. That is straight-up torture if you ask me. Boobs up, belly out –- that is my motto.

There are some things that are attributed to feminism that I don’t believe are inherent to it, like puritanical attitudes toward sex and a general distrust of the trappings of stereotypical, idealized beauty. A feminist may or may not feel these things. We are all different, as women are different.

All I know is that as a woman, in my work, and in my life, I have been treated as if my achievements were less valuable because they were borne from my body. I only know this because I have worked closely, been intimate with, risen and fallen with men of all kinds. I have done the same with women of all kinds –- and my assessment, of all the humanity I have experienced: Women get the short end of it.

So therefore, my feminism -- it’s kind of necessary. I don’t want to feel like I am less than anyone, and so I have to label myself in order to be ready for the fight.

I don’t want young girls to fear the word feminism, because they will desperately need it out in the world, and to fear what will help you, make you stronger, better, happier -– it makes no sense.

Sometimes women say they are not feminist in order to be closer to men, to side with men, to be one of the "guys," but I think being feminist, and therefore calling yourself equal to men is the truer, more sincere way of being closer to men, because you are telling men that they don’t have to do everything anymore, that you will gladly split the burden of the earth, which weighs on us all, regardless of how our bodies are made.

yeah, definitely understandable. I really wish the movement at large would be more inclusive and considerate of WOC and trans*women and their experiences. we're pushing out and ignoring so many women and pretty much invalidating their experiences entirely, and it just makes me really angry.

I read this critique a lot on ONTD and other sites and I'm generally curious as to what the current state of "feminist" scholarship is. Gender studies isn't my discipline but from the interaction I've had with people who work predominately in Women and Gender studies, Queer studies etc... at the University I work for, there has been a concerted effort to address issues pertaining to POC, and the LGBTQ community. Is there an effort in the discipline over-all to address the short-comings of 1970s feminism in the recent scholarship being published? I know there certainly is in Art History but I'm not really as up on the current state of things as I should be :(

I feel like most "feminist" classes in school try really hard to include non-white issues, but that's just no bleeding over outside of those classes, tbh. There's still a ton of racism in the modern feminist movement and not a lot of apologies for the racism that took place during that last 40 years or that's happening today.

idk I think one of the most important things I've ever learned is that, most of the time white, able bodied, straight, cis gendered people feel they have to speak for non-white, disabled, trans* people because they want to be "the voice for the voiceless." Non-white people are not "voiceless," they just are not being listened too. That's my problem with a lot of popular feminists. They would rather tell me how non-white people feel then let a non-white person tell me what is actually happening to them.

Sorry, this comment is kind of a mess. Does this answer your question at all?

No that makes total sense. It takes a while for theory to assimilate into the general consciousness. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my university bubble and forget that other people don't just sit and read academic journals all day.

And yeah, I definitely recognize that the whole "speaking for the voiceless" thing is a huge problem, even though it may come from a place of good intentions.

the effort that's been made for intersectionality in women's/gender studies is pretty much just adding in a "race & intersectionality" chapter (and MAYBE a chapter about queerness) to 101 classes. but these chapters are usually super watered-down and geared to avoid challenging actual racism/transphobia, especially among the white and cis students themselves. it makes the issues seem really abstract rather than concrete issues that actually exist, so the people who aren't directly affected by them don't bother to take it seriously and do some self-examination.

like, we had two lectures on race is my women's class this year and they were SOOOOO white-oriented and careful not to ~offend the white students (in other words: confront their own racism) and yet so many white students in the class were always raising their hands to talk about how "reverse racist!!!!1111" that part of the course was because the professor was advocating for Affirmative Action. meanwhile they didn't have shit to say when our professor was citing stats about black people being more likely to be arrested, convicted, imprisoned, assaulted, killed, raped, etc. as a result of ACTUAL racism.

Thank you for the response! I wanted to formulate a more engaging comment but I'm having trouble with my words right now. I generally find that its hard to make students confront that how they've been conditioned to view the world can instill in them "unintentional" racism/sexism, but that once they're taught the theory and made to self-examine its really an eyeopener. It's a shame that young students aren't being challenged more rigorously.

I think (totally assuming based on my own experiences) that there's still a bit of negotiating going on as to how we integrate new theory into an established cannon. Especially for 100 level classes where there's a lot of push to instill students with a very basic and shallow overview of a huge subject in a short amount of time. That doesn't excuse the watering down or omitting topics of race etc... of course, but its good that people are being exposed to it all I suppose.